Tigertail Productions continues its SpeakOut project for GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered) teens with a weeklong residency featuring nationally recognized New York-based Jamaican lesbian spoken word poet and performer Staceyann Chin. School and community workshops, as well as a poetry slam evening, geared towards GLBT youth, and a reading and panel discussion for a general audience, take place throughout Miami-Dade County. All events are free.Click here to see the complete residency schedule

Staceyann Chin co-wrote and performed in the Tony Award-nominated Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam and has presented her own one-woman shows Off-Broadway. She has been published in numerous anthologies and periodicals, and won numerous poetry slam awards. Chin brings the cadences and history of her years growing up in Jamaica to her work while writing as an out lesbian. Her poetry is a bracing, powerful yet tender examination of her own life and the world around her that locates itself at the complex intersection of sexual, gender and racial identities. Chin has read and performed across the U.S. and around the world, though this marks her first visit to South Florida.

The SpeakOut program and Staceyann Chin's residency is made possible in part by a grant from the GLBT Community Projects Fund at Dade Community Foundation, Greater Miami's permanent endowment made possible by generous donors since 1967 and the National Performance Network's Performance Residency Program. Major contributors to the National Performance Network include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), Altria and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Tigertail Productions is a Partner in the National Performance Network (NPN). NPN is a group of cultural organizers and artists facilitating the practice and public experience of the performing arts in the United States. NPN serves artists, arts organizers, and a broad range of audiences and communities across the country through commissions, residencies, culture-centered community projects and other artistic activities. For more information visit www.npnweb.org.